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Discovery of at least 100 subglacial lakes beneath the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet has focused international attention on the challenges presented by the way we conduct science in such unique and inhospitable settings in an atmosphere of increasingly stringent environmental concerns. Exploration of subglacial environments will require careful and detailed planning, organization, and international cooperation. To this end, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) convened an international Group of Specialists (Subglacial Antarctic Lake Exploration Group of Specialists-SALEGOS) to develop a detailed assessment of the needs and critical milestones to be accomplished during the implementation of a subglacial exploration and research program. This paper surveys the progress and recommendations made by SALEGOS since its inception regarding the current state of knowledge of subglacial environments, technological needs and challenges, international management, the portfolio of scientific projects, and "clean" requirements for entry, observatory deployment, and sample retrieval.

Antarctic subglacial lakes have, over the past few years, been hypothesised to house unique forms of life and hold detailed sedimentary records of past climate change. Testing this hypothesis requires in situ examinations. The direct measurement of subglacial lakes has been considered ever since the largest and best-known lake, named Lake Vostok, was identified as having a deep water-column. The Subglacial Antarctic Lake Environments (SALE)

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Extreme habitats lie outside the range of conditions in which most of organisms live. 'Extreme' includes physical extremes, e.g. temperature, radiation, pressure, and geochemical extreme, for example desiccation, salinity, pH, depletion of oxygen or extreme redox potential. Investigations of these environments are important for the study of evolution relationships, emergence of new species and various ecological relations among organisms which compensate certain environmental externalities. From such habitats new metabolites and metabolic pathways of organisms can be expected, which indicate bioremediation potential, discovery of new antibiotics, etc. Extreme habitats are populated by highly specialized organisms -extremophiles, which must -in a contrast to other species -bridge different stresses conditions. Liquid water is the sine qua non of life on Earth, but regarding the physical and geochemical extremes, life is present even in habitats with obvious lack of water, e.g. deserts. In such habitats environmental parameters allow existence to only specially adapted organisms live. All these facts support the idea of sustainable management with these natural features, their protection, preserving their genetic pool and popularisation in the society.